Another fine episcopal appointment by JPII

[T]he Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ. (Lumen Gentium 20)

Just something to keep in mind while one reads the following AP story (emphasis added by me):

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian archbishop said adolescents are "spontaneously homosexual" and in need of guidance, while society at large is pedophile, according to a Wednesday report.

Archbishop Dadeus Grings — a conservative priest who has made controversial statements in the past — told the O Globo newspaper at a Brazilian bishops conference that society's woes are being reflected in the sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.

"Society today is pedophile, that is the problem. So, people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign," Grings told O Globo.

(snip)

Grings denounced the abuse within the church, but he said internal punishment of priests guilty of abuse was sufficient and that police should not be involved.

"For the church to go and accuse its own sons would be a little strange," he said.

The archbishop also said it was important to help children avoid homosexuality.

"We know that the adolescent is spontaneously homosexual. Boys play with boys, girls play with girls," he said. "If there is no proper guidance, this sticks. The question is – how are we going to educate our children to use a sexuality that is human and suitable?"

Grings also said the acceptance of homosexuality in society could pave the way for the acceptance of pedophilia.

"When sexuality is trivialized, it's clear that this is going to affect all cases. Homosexuality is such a case. Before, the homosexual wasn't spoken of. He was discriminated against.

"When we begin to say they have rights, rights to demonstrate publicly, pretty soon, we'll find the rights of pedophiles," he said.

The archbishop has made controversial comments in the past.

In 2003, he argued that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, though a few years later he recanted. Experts say 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Last year, he outraged Jewish groups in Brazil by telling a magazine that "more Catholics than Jews died in the Holocaust, but this isn't known because the Jews control the world's media."

Grings told The Associated Press at that time he was trying to advocate for the millions of non-Jewish victims of the Nazis.

* * *

Grings was appointed bishop by John Paul II in 1991. [source]

"Him that pisseth against the wall..."

A friend of mine emailed me a link to this video today, and I nearly DIED when I watched it.

It's a sermon by Steven L. Anderson, a Baptist preacher who got some media attention a while back for saying that he prayed for Barack Obama's death.

This is about a rather different topic. And it has to be seen to be believed. If I didn't know this guy was a sincere believer, I would have thought this was a parody (proving, once again, Poe's Law).

Watch it, it's hilarious.

"We love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!”

Here's an interesting article by Hanna Rosin, from The Atlantic: "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?"

The title is somewhat misleading -- it's rather generous to describe the religion portrayed in this article as "Christian," and as popular as the "prosperity gospel" might be in the US, it's hardly representative of Christianity in general, or even American Protestantism in general.

But the article provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of the sad people who've fallen for the "prosperity gospel," something I learned about only a few years ago when, out of anthropological curiosity, I started watching people like Oral Roberts and Creflo Dollar.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre’s success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the pastor’s basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents space from a lovely old Baptist church that can’t otherwise fill its pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—“because Americanos don’t do that,” one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished enough to reflect his wingtips.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. “Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!” he preached that Sunday. “More work! Better work! The best finances!” Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz.

Later, D’andry Then, a trim, pretty real-estate agent and one of the church founders, stood up to give her testimony. Business had not been good of late, and “you know, Monday I have to pay this, and Tuesday I have to pay that.” Then, just that morning, “Jesus gave me $1,000.” She didn’t explain whether the gift came in the form of a real-estate commission or a tax refund or a stuffed envelope left at her door. The story hung somewhere between metaphor and a literal image of barefoot Jesus handing her a pile of cash. No one in the church seemed the least bit surprised by the story, and certainly no one expressed doubt. “If you have financial pressure on you, and you don’t know where the next payment is coming from, don’t pay any attention to that!” she continued. “Don’t get discouraged! Jesus is the answer.”

America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity. In Garay’s church, God is the “Owner of All the Silver and Gold,” and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. “Instead of saying ‘I’m poor,’ say ‘I’m rich,’” Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. “The word of God will manifest itself in reality.”

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

You can read the rest of the article here.

The Casa del Padre website features a picture of an eagle on the home page. A predatory bird. Seems appropriate to me.

Image: Fernando Garay, Pastor at Casa del Padre.

Who knew? Condoms make AIDS worse!

Pope Benedict XVI on the African AIDS crisis:

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

I suppose it was inevitable that someone would ask, even though the answer was entirely predictable. Still, with the Vatican's credibility deficit deepening by the day, this very public reminder of its most preposterous teaching could probably have come at a better time.

[source]

Rethinking Benedict's SSPX decision

I've been thinking about the reaction to Pope Benedict's decision to "rehabilitate" the excommunicated bishops of the SSPX. From people on the progressive wing of the Church, the reaction has been one of almost unanimous indignation.

I wonder, though, if the world would really be better off with SSPX operating independently of the Vatican. It seems to me that bringing them back into the fold might ultimately have the effect of diluting their extremism.

Perhaps we've already started to see this. Antisemitic material on their website, previously ignored by the outside world, became the subject of much discussion. The sudden increase in attention resulted in at least some of it being taken down.

Reversing the excommunications is only a first step to bringing SSPX into the mainstream church. I don't, frankly, think it's going to happen. The Vatican is not going to make the kind of concessions the SSPX types are going to require. The whole attempt will look, on the surface, like a failure. But the antisemitism of the SSPX, once ignored by the outside world, has been revealed for everyone to see.

Modifying the Qur'an

Having already spent a year in prison, Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai is facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for "modifying the Qur'an," according to this article by Heidi Vogt of the Associated Press. But his alleged crime, more specifically, is that he was responsible for the printing of a translation of the Qur'an that "did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation."

Vogt continues, "It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word."

The article doesn't explain exactly how Zalmai's translation "modifies" the Qur'an, just that it does.

I've touched on this belief that the Qur'an cannot be translated in a previous post, in which I quoted a passage from Irshad Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today. In that post I wrote,

On the one hand, many Muslims insist that the Qur'an cannot be translated, per se, and that any attempt inevitably corrupts the meaning of the text. On the other hand, the teachings of the Qur'an are often thought to be particularly clear. Manji asks, "if the Quran is as straightforward as the purists tell us, then aren't its teachings easily translated into a thousand tongues?" (24).

It's a good point. But it's a rational argument -- and if religious extremists could be persuaded by rational arguments, they wouldn't be extremists, would they?

Antisemitism of the SSPX

UPDATE: Since I first posted this, the article has been removed from the SSPX site. I have updated the link in this post to direct to the same article hosted on another site.

While Richard Williamson's recent and public denial of the Holocaust caused much of the initial controversy currently swirling around Pope Benedict's rehabilitation of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, I've started to notice in recent days more attention being paid to the antisemitism of the SSPX as a whole.

One article available on the SSPX website, "The Mystery of the Jews," has been mentioned on numerous blogs, and briefly quoted on several of them.

One could actually quote it selectively and make it sound quite complimentary of the Jewish people. One subheading, for example, is "The Greatness of the Jews." You don't have to read much of it, however, to recognise it as an antisemitic screed.

The article presents a "theological explanation" of the Jewish people. It imagines that there "is no period of history about which one can write without mentioning them."

It makes much of the story of Abraham's two sons, Isaac and Ishmael:

Ishmael, the first to be born and the natural offspring of the slave, Hagar, represents the Synagogue of the Jews, which glories in its descent from the flesh of Abraham. But Isaac, born miraculously of the sterile Sarah according to a Promise of God, represents the Church which, like Isaac, is born by faith in the Promise of Christ.

Jews, according to the SSPX authors, imagine that their fleshly connection to Abraham accords them salvation. They are wrong, say the authors, as salvation comes only through "spiritual union with Christ through faith." The consequences are rather dire:

The Jewish people which began with Abraham will be able to attain to its salvation not by the fact of its material descent from Abraham, but in believing in Christ and assimilating itself to Him in faith.

Now, it is not news that the SSPX rejects the possibility of salvation of non-Christians. The really disturbing parts come a bit later. Continuing with the spirit-versus-flesh them, it goes on in some detail about the "carnalization" of the Jewish people. The authors helpfully explain that they "have coined this word — carnalization — by which we mean to indicate the Jewish people's historical material-mindedness."

After citing the "the terrible 'Woes' declared by the Jew, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the last days of His life on earth, when He denounced the hypocritical religion, purity, and piety of the Pharisees," they write, "No one in all the course of history has pronounced more terrible anathemas than those of the Son of God against the perfidious carnality of His own people."

Some other choice comments:

"The Jewish people, once a mystery of goodness, is now changed into a mystery of iniquity. It is no longer Isaac, but Ishmael. No longer Jacob, but Esau. No longer Abel, but Cain."

"The Jewish people, whose destiny was to bring Christ to us, found Christ a stumbling block. A part of them believed in Him, and built on Him to form the roots and the trunk of that Olive Tree which is the Catholic Church. The other part fell, denying Him and invoking their carnal pride of race and nation. That part of Israel was rejected, and called upon itself the blood of Christ as a curse. It is this part that forms Judaism proper, which is the heir and the continuation of the rabbis who rejected Christ."

"Judaism is inimical to all nations in general, and in a special manner to Christian nations. It plays the part of Ishmael who persecuted Isaac, of Esau who sought to kill Jacob, and of Cain who put Abel to death."

"[T]he adversarial relationship of the Jewish people is not a local enmity, or one based on blood, or on conflicting interests. It is an enmity disposed by God. The Jewish people, if it has not converted to Christianity, will, even if it does not wish to, seek to ruin Christianity..."

"If the unrepentant Jewish people are disposed by God to be a theological enemy, the status of this opposition must be universal, inevitable, and terrible."

"Christendom and Jewry are destined inevitably to meet everywhere without reconciliation or mixing. It represents in history the eternal struggle of Lucifer against God, of darkness against the Light, of the flesh against the spirit. It represents in time the spiritual accomplishing and the fleshly accomplishing of the Scriptures. The Letter must be everywhere to be the servant of the Spirit."

I found this one particularly revealing:

"In the world as it is, there can be only two truly basic modes, two poles of attraction: the Christian and the Jewish. Only two religions: Christian and Jewish. All that is not of Christ and for Christ is done in favor of Judaism. It follows from that, that the de-Christianizing of the world runs parallel to its Judaizing."

After eulogising the Christian faith of the middle ages, they write:

"If the Gentile people now considers this genuine greatness of the medieval age as gloomy or obscurantist, and wishes to be great with the material greatness of Babylon, then it can have it: but only as a servant of Judaism. In the domain of the material, it is the Jewish people who have the superiority."

"The only protection of the Gentile people against enslaving itself to the material superiority of the Jewish people is the Catholic life. This is because Jesus Christ alone is the Savior of all mankind. Note that the Middle Ages did not succumb to material mastery for centuries."

"Catholics are not to enter into commercial, social, nor political relations which are bound hypocritically to seek the ruin of Christendom. Jews must not live together with Christians because this is what their own Jewish laws ordain and also because their errors and material superiority have virulent consequences among other peoples. If the other peoples reject these precautions, they will invite upon themselves these consequences, namely, to serve the Jewish people to whom belongs superiority in the kingdom of the material."

"The Jews were responsible —directly and/or indirectly —for covering the Just One with insults, throwing over His shoulders a cloak of contempt, putting on His head a crown of thorns and into His hands a reed. With striking, spitting, insults, and injury they lavished on Him every sort of humiliation. They spared Him no shame."

"How long must this terrible enmity between Jews and Christians last? Until God in His mercy brings about the conversion and reconciliation of the Jewish people. St. Paul teaches us that the day will come when Israel will recognize Him whom he has denied."

This part contains their rather interesting definition of "antisemitism":

"The relations of Christians and Jews cannot be governed by the common law of Christians, but only by an exceptional legislation which takes count of the theological status of the Jewish people. The Catholic Church’s teaching is that they should neither be eliminated from among us (as antisemitism seeks) nor given equality of rights, which leads to their superiority (as is advocated by liberalism or philosemitism)."

So apparently, antisemitism is limited to wanting to exterminate Jews. And since the SSPX authors of this article do not want this, they are not antisemites! Simple, isn't it?

I could continue -- I've covered only about a half of the article, believe it or not -- but you get the point.

Now, one might argue that one article on the SSPX website does not necessarily reflect the views of all of its members. Perhaps Benedict is seeking in the long run to bring only the moderate SSPX members back into the fold.

One wonders, though -- are there moderate SSPX members? Somehow I doubt that.

Richard Williamson

I'll have more to say later about the recent controversy over Pope Benedict's rehabilitation of the bishops of SSPX, including the Holocaust-denying Richard Williamson.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share this little passage from a letter Williamson wrote about the appropriateness of women wearing trousers, which is from the SSPX website:

Girls, be mothers, and in order to be mothers, let not wild horses drag you into shorts or trousers. When activities are proposed to you requiring trousers, if it is something your great-grandmother did, then find a way of doing it, like her, in a skirt. And if your great-grandmother did not do it, then forget it! Her generation created your country, your generation is destroying it. Of course not all women who wear trousers abort the fruit of their womb, but all help to create the abortive society. Old-fashioned is good, modern is suicidal. You wish to stop abortion? Do it by example. Never wear trousers or shorts. [source]

Not his most serious problem, but it is revealing.

Williamson's recent comments denying the Holocaust on Swedish television are being well-publicised. Less is being made of previous things he has said and/or written, which show that this is not coming out of the blue. This is from John L. Allen at the National Catholic Reporter:

In 1989, for example, police in Canada briefly considered filing charges against Williamson under that country’s hate speech laws after he gave an address in Quebec charging that Jews were responsible for "changes and corruption" in the Catholic church, that “not one Jew” perished in Nazi gas chambers, and that the Holocaust was a myth created so that the West would "approve the state of Israel."

Williamson also praised the writings of Ernst Zundel, a German-born Canadian immigrant whose works include Did Six Million Really Die? and The Hitler We Loved and Why, both considered mainstays of Holocaust denial literature.

In 1991, Williamson issued a letter from Winona, Minn., where he served as rector of a Lefebvrite seminary, stating, "Until [Jews] rediscover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world dominion, to prepare the Antichrist’s throne in Jerusalem." [source]

Incidentally, Ernst Zundel should no longer be called a "Canadian immigrant," as he has been deported (and imprisoned) in Germany. Also, he did not write Did Six Million Really Die?, though he did publish it. Which takes nothing away from Allen's point, I just wanted to be accurate.

"The Most Hated Family in America" Comes to Canada...(tried to, anyway)

(Picture generated by the Westboro Baptist Church Sign Generator)

The Westboro Baptist Church, well-known for their "godhatesfags.com" website and their picketing of the funerals of dead American soldiers -- deaths that they cheerfully applaud, by the way -- announced recently that they would be picketing the funeral of Tim McLean. The reason, not that it matters, is that McLean was Canadian, and his murder was a sign of God's anger towards Canada's tolerance of gays, abortion, etc. The Westboro Church was hoping to come here in order to let us know that.

If you're not familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church (or even if you are), you should really check out this 2007 BBC documentary by Louis Theroux (who was, I think you'll agree, the perfect person to make this). It's one of the saddest and most fascinating things I've ever seen on TV. You really couldn't make this stuff up.


Fred Phelps later claimed that God "raised up" the BBC specifically so it would eventually help him spread his message to the world through this documentary. Wow.

This is disgusting and sad and scary...

ARLINGTON, Texas -- A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.

Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

[The church's pastor, the Rev. Gary] Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there.

Ah, of course. I know whenever I go to a funeral, I naturally assume the church in which it is held has "endorsed" the perceived sins of the deceased.

The pastor said he declined to host the service "not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle."

What principle is that, I wonder? I assume the pastor would agree that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3.23). So if sinners can't have their funeral services in this church, exactly who can?

Read the whole story here.